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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

“Where Are The Catholics?”

Is Christianity the measure of modernity or is modernity the measure of Christianity?

On
the morning after Thanksgiving, I was driving over to Frederick, Maryland with
one of my nephews. On the car radio, he was listening to a talk radio program
from WMAL in Washington. The host of the program was a man who described
himself as a conservative Jew. He was talking of the increasing religious
persecution within the United States. Several times throughout the program he
pointed out that it was the Catholics who are more and more being singled out
and discriminated against. The First Amendment on religious freedom seems
almost a dead letter when it comes to Christians in general and Catholics in
particular.

The
host noted that if any similar criticism is directed toward other religious
groups and religions, especially Islam, the whole world knows about it. And in
some cases the world is threatened. Churches are burned in Islamic countries,
Christians killed, and nothing much is said either by our government or in the
press. Almost the only voice that seems systematically to defend a Catholic
position, he remarked, is that of Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. The host
went on to wonder why this silence is the case. Part of it, he thought, is
because Catholics themselves do not seem to care too much, or else they are not
aware of the dimensions of the issue. They think it will just go away.

Many
writers and voices have pointed out that the present administration is by all
odds the most anti-Catholic regime in this country’s history. That did not
prevent some 50 percent of Catholics from voting for it. But that may be a clue
about the problem. Often the leaders of those measures and decrees most against
officially stated Catholic positions are formulated and carried out by those
who are Catholics. Several other writers have argued that so long as these
high-profile Catholics carry out anti-Catholic policies and remain in
apparently good standing in the Church, many Catholics will conclude that,
whatever the noise about these issues, it must be all right to be a Catholic
and take positions contrary to what the bishops and Church seem to hold.

Why
Catholics do not defend themselves against such attacks on their religion and
their place in public life has long puzzled many sympathetic citizens.